


Homecoming

by happygolovely



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Awkward Romance, Communication Failure, Conflict Resolution, First Kiss, Happy Ending, M/M, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Reconciliation, Returning Home, Reunited and It Feels So Good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 22:37:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13421070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happygolovely/pseuds/happygolovely
Summary: Ed's never really had a home before. Not if you find houses in people.He finds his place in the world, returns to it.





	Homecoming

He returns on a Sunday morning. The air, fresh and clean. Sits outside the manor on the front steps. Watches the sun come up over the horizon. 

Oswald joins him sometime around six in the morning. They look out at the sky together in silence. 

Ed reaches for his hand, he pulls back. 

“Go home, Ed.” He moves back towards the door, relying heavily on his cane. It's one of those days when the cold air hits his bones a certain way and he feels it with every inch of him. 

A hollowness of sorts. 

“I thought that’s what I was doing.” 

Ed never had one before not really. Not if you find houses in people. No one ever stayed long enough to become one. 

Never minded before. 

Keeps coming back to this place, this man. 

They look at each other. Oswald unlocks the door and he follows him home. 

Always trailing after him, inevitably, endlessly. 

That gravitational pull he exerts so effortlessly. 

He pushes and pulls at it, runs as far as he can. Pulled back into place. Succumb to the inevitable. 

Oswald takes his hat off his head and Ed reaches for him. The hat falls to the floor. 

They stumble up the stairs, desperate and clinging to each other. 

Oswald pushes him up against the wall and loosens his tie. Pulls him down by it and kisses him. Aching, yearning.

Ed kisses him gently, almost too gently. Oswald shatters under the touch. Glass shards up against the skin of him and he loves loves the cut of it. He can’t feel a scratch. 

The tie falls to the ground, the tide rises. 

Up to their ears in water and sinking faster by the minute. The breath between their lips the only source of air and they drink greedily from the oxygen supply.  

Hat gone, tie gone, glasses fell off earlier somewhere on the staircase. The crunch underneath his shoes. He doesn’t care. 

Forges ahead blindly with all the confidence of a man who has no idea what he’s doing. 

Reaches for the buttons on his waistcoat. All these blasted, damned layers of his. The man was a never ending ribbon, a dna strand coming loose at the seams. 

Wants to tear into his genetic code and rip open his jacket, just to find another jacket underneath. Reach into the very fabric of his core. Understand him on a molecular level. 

Ed has just gotten the last cursed button loose when Oswald pulls back. 

“This was a mistake.” 

His heart falls out of his mouth and tumbles across the floor. Leaking all over the carpet. 

“I don’t - I don't understand.” Difficult for him to admit but he is well and truly lost. 

Dirt under his fingernails and bugs in the air. His hands pulling him from the earth, so very long ago.

They’re back in the woods once more. 

“Help me.” Ed asks him desperately. “Help me to understand.” 

“Your heart’s not in it. I don’t want it like this, don’t don’t mock me not for this please.” 

Ed barely resists the urge to just shoot them both. It would certainly save time and spare him pointless conversation. 

“What makes you say something so magnificently stupid?” 

Oswald glares and pushes him away. Buttons up his jacket as fast as he can, missing one in the middle a patch of skin showing through. 

Straightens his clothes and fixes his hair, still decidedly debauched regrettably not debased. 

“You know your way out. Don’t let the door hit you. That’s my prerogative.” 

“No. No I’m not leaving you, not now not ever again. If I have to sit outside your door every miserable Sunday for the rest of my life.” 

“Be miserable then. See if I care.” 

Ed crowds up into his space. Arms stretched over his head, pinning him to the wall. Their earlier positions reversed. 

“That’s the trouble with you. All the caring. If you did a little less of that you’d have it easier. My trouble is you. That heart of yours spilling over into everything. Even me.” Kisses him to prove a point, to end a war and begin the rest. 

The reasons don’t really matter when he’s sighing against his mouth. 

“If I didn’t care, would it feel the same?” Ed asks pressing kisses to  his cheeks, his jaw, the slope of his nose. Such a dreaded, dear nose. He’s unbearably fond of it. 

Unmistakeable. Unforgettable. 

He felt this way only once before. In a small apartment with Miss Kringle. 

Head going round and round. Heart standing still. 

He does care, always has just a little too much where Oswald is concerned. 

Loving, fighting. Chasing the thrill. One and the same.

Oswald is shattering once more, fragments at his feet. He could pick up the pieces of him and carry them around in his pocket letting them cut him to the quick. 

A sweet butterknife. 

He can taste the cream of his skin, the salt of his...tears. 

“Fine then. Let’s just. Let’s just get this over with. “ Oswald sounds bitter and small. “If this is the only way, so be it.” 

“Explain.” 

“You talk a good game, it's all talk. You can’t even look me in the  eye.” 

Ed laughs. “Is that what this is about? Oswald, you took off my glasses and threw them on the floor. I stepped on them. I can’t see anything.” 

Oswald looks up at him with sudden brightness. Kisses him joyfully. What a difference it makes. A tender, loving thing. 

“Sorry bout your glasses.” He doesn’t sound the least bit sorry. Ed is anticipating a lifetime of walking on broken glass. He could get used to it. 

“I’ll buy you another, a hundred.” Interesting that his first impulse is to throw money at it. Typical really. 

“You could make it up to me now, if you like.” 

“Excellent suggestion.”

Everything passes in a heated haze. He comes to somewhere in the middle of an ocean. Oswald slides a pair of glasses onto his face. 

“I bought a spare set. Thought they might come in handy someday.” 

“Clever minx. Always five steps ahead.” 

Flips him over and presses him down into the sand.

Kisses him senseless. 

“Never seven.” 

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: happygoloony


End file.
